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Brian Brady resigned last Wednesday, Feb. 19 from the Dillon Police Department amid a 5th Judicial District Attorney’s Office investigation into whether he committed perjury over a parking ticket dispute.

Brady, who had been serving since June 2013 as the town’s interim police chief, was placed on paid administrative leave sometime in January during a closed meeting of the Dillon Town Council.

His resignation last week came two days after the Summit Daily News filed a Colorado Open Records Act request with the district attorney’s office for a copy of its perjury investigation and one day after filing an additional open records request with the town of Dillon in hopes of learning the circumstances of Brady’s paid administrative leave.

In a response letter sent Friday, Feb. 21 to the Daily News, Dillon town manager Joe Wray said he would not provide any information to the public about his former interim police chief, citing a provision of the Colorado Open Records Act that states a custodian “is required to deny access to certain records, including personnel files.”

Wray also cited the Colorado Criminal Justice Records Act in his denial of access to Brady’s records, saying the “town believes that the privacy rights of the individual for whom you have made the request currently outweigh any right of the public to any such records.”

“In consideration of the foregoing, release of the records you requested may result in harm to Mr. Brady’s reputation,” the letter stated. “Moreover, the town has an interest in keeping confidential information confidential when counterbalanced with public disclosure with personal and private information.”

Calls into both Wray and Brady have not yet been returned and Brady’s resignation letter makes no reference to the district attorney’s investigation. It simply states that Brady is “looking forward to new challenges.”

Following Brady’s resignation last Wednesday, 5th Judicial District Attorney Bruce Brown closed his office’s investigation into the perjury allegations. Records pertaining to ongoing investigations receive some protection from public disclosure under Colorado Revised Statutes.

However, those protections decrease significantly after an investigation has been deemed closed and on Thursday, Feb. 20 Brown submitted a copy of the report to the Summit Daily. In it, Brown cited prosecutorial discretion and his belief that pursuing criminal charges against Brady would be a disservice to the Summit County community as his reasoning for closing the investigation.

“We don’t have the resources to pursue every single criminal act,” Brown said Monday. “In light of a myriad of considerations we have to look at with every case, I decided to use discretion to determine the most appropriate outcome.

“This case is no different than any other case I would consider.”

According to records, the investigation stems from a parking ticket Brady issued in July 2013 to Lakewood resident Bill Bryant.

Brady cited Bryant for parking within 30 feet of a traffic signal or sign, a $50 violation in the town of Dillon. But Bryant contested the ticket in Dillon/Silverthorne Municipal Court, citing a technicality in the verbiage of Dillon’s traffic code.

Although Bryant won a dismissal on October 9, 2013, he asked the district attorney’s office to investigate Brady’s testimony, which took place during their hearing on September 18, 2013, in municipal court.

During that hearing, Judge David Helmer asked Brady to explain the police department’s protocol for determining the distance between vehicles and traffic signals, according to court records.

Brady said the police department uses laser measuring devices to determine such distances, according to records. As one of his pieces of evidence, Brady submitted a copy of the ticket he wrote in July 2013. The copy features a note, “Laser #2 check 9 ft.” Brady testified he wrote the note at the time he issued the ticket.

However the original ticket, which was submitted to municipal court, contained no such note, according to records.

Bryant told the district attorney’s office in an email he believed Brady wrote the note long after the ticket was issued and probably after Brady learned Bryant had plans to contest the ticket in court, according to records. Bryant told district attorney’s office investigators he believed the doctoring of evidence constituted an act of perjury.

Brady’s resignation comes at a particularly shaky time in the history of the Dillon Police Department. In June of last year, then-police chief Steve Neumeyer resigned after serving just a year in that capacity. He cited his wife’s health as the primary reason for his resignation, but also received a six-figure severance package before his official June 3, 2013, departure.

Brady was appointed interim police chief shortly after. The search for a permanent replacement is ongoing, but Wray said earlier this month the field has been narrowed to four and interviews are slated to begin the first week of March.

This is not the first time Brady has found himself at the center of a criminal investigation.

In February 2011, Brady was charged in Summit County Court with one count each of third-degree assault and official oppression, both misdemeanors. Those charges stemmed from allegations that Brady used excessive force in subduing a suspect after responding in December 2010 to a report of an armed robbery in Silverthorne. The Silverthorne Police Department filed the charges against Brady.

The third-degree assault charge was eventually dismissed in August 2010 at trial. Brady received a deferred judgment on the official oppression charge, according to court records.

Following the criminal investigation and the trial, Brady filed in January 2013 a lawsuit against the town of Silverthorne and the district attorney’s office in the U.S. District Court of Colorado, according to court records.

A joint motion to dismiss the case was filed six months later. It was granted on June 12, 2013, by U.S. District Judge Christine Arguello — about a week after Brady took over as interim police chief.

It is unclear who is currently in charge of the Dillon Police Department. The Summit Daily made a second attempt to contact Wray by email to provide a comment about the story, but Wray declined, saying, “this is a personnel matter and I am not at liberty to discuss it.”